Pitstop incident cost Verstappen Miami F1 sprint win, says Marko

Red Bull Formula 1 advisor Helmut Marko thinks Max Verstappen’s pitlane collision with Andrea Kimi Antonelli prevented him from challenging McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri for a sprint race win in Miami.

As polesitter Antonelli got bumped down to fourth at the start of a wet-to-dry sprint, Verstappen moved up to third and was powerless to keep up with the quicker McLarens of Piastri and Norris due to excessive tyre wear on his Red Bull.

But the drying Miami Autodrome circuit offered Verstappen an opportunity to re-ignite his bid to win the sprint as an early pitstop for slicks by his team-mate Yuki Tsunoda showed dry-weather tyres were much faster than the intermediates the McLarens were on.

Verstappen was one of the first frontrunners to dive into the pits for slicks on lap 13 of 18 as he tried to undercut Piastri and Norris, who delayed their pitstops to avoid coming out in traffic.

But Verstappen was released into the path of Antonelli, who was about to stop in the Mercedes box right in front of Verstappen. Contact between the pair caused front wing damage on the Dutchman’s car before a 10-second time penalty for an unsafe release fully dropped him out of the top 10.

But according to Marko the incident didn’t just cost Verstappen six points for third place, as the Austrian felt his driver would have had the slick-tyre pace advantage to defeat the McLarens too.

“It was our fault, and without this incident I think we had a chance to win, because we were four seconds faster with the slick tyres than the others on the rain tyres,” Marko said when quizzed about the incident by Autosport.

“We were not that far back, and we gained four seconds per lap, and they came in later. With Max we could have won, I’m convinced.”

Like Verstappen, Marko denied Red Bull’s third pitstop issue across as many race weekends was a worrying trend, and he also played down any relation to Red Bull’s long-time sporting director Jonathan Wheatley departing to Sauber.

“I think that’s a coincidence,” he replied when asked about the impact of losing Wheatley, who was renowned for his pitstop organisation.

“We have to look in the details, but it has always been different reasons. It was not the same mistake, but we have to investigate and stop that. It’s a human error.”

Verstappen heads into Saturday’s grand prix qualifying session 19 points behind championship leader Piastri, with Norris now just nine points behind his McLaren team-mate after snatching the sprint win away from the Australian.

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